A Pastoral Letter to the Transgender Community
There are Christians who believe humans were cooked up from scratch in a magic garden with a boobytrapped tree in its center. We're not that kind of Christians.
At The Park Church and across much of our denomination, the United Church of Christ, we understand that homo sapiens is one species of evolved primate among countless miraculous and beautiful forms of life on earth, an improbable green and blue jewel circling a star.
Life is an explosion of variation and chance, a process science only partially understands. What we do know is that nature is not interested in categories. Species change, sometimes rapidly. Within a species, there is tremendous variety.
In the human species, biological sex is an arbitrary assignment on a continuum that includes chromosomal expression, genes that drive hormone production, and outward appearance. Hundreds of thousands of people are born every year who do not fit neatly into the traditional binary of male and female. A good God would never reject those who were literally "born this way."
If biological sex is arbitrary and non-binary, gender is even more fluid. Gender is a cultural construct, an assignment of roles and expectations specific to a tradition and context. It evolves in the way that cultures change and evolve, often but not exclusively driven by advances in science and technology. Some cultures prize women warriors, while ours found them almost unimaginable until recent decades. Women have been mystics and prophets, though seldom elevated to their proper place in Western religion.
Socially constructed gender is a game some choose to play. It is no more real than race, an excuse to strip some people of their dignity and autonomy.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump declared that you do not exist. He is wrong.
We still have much to learn about gender dysphoria, people who struggle with the sex they were assigned at birth and the cultural gender roles assigned to that sex. Corporate social media algorithms, rather than connecting and liberating folks who fall outside of cisgender and heterosexual norms, seems to be narrowing definitions of gender expression and reinforcing patriarchy.
Despite all we still do not know, there is no question that you are a part of God's good creation, blessed and loved. And welcome at The Park Church.
We will continue in our commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community, no matter who is in the White House, no matter how much vile hatred you hear coming from Washington or perverted pulpits.
God loves you. And so do we.
Blessings,
+Gary
The Rev. J. Gary Brinn, Pastor and Teacher
The Park Church